Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 882: The Construction Begins

The first foundation trench was cut before the convoy’s engines had cooled.

*CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.*

”EASY! EASY, YOU IDIOT! THAT MIXER COSTS MORE THAN YOUR MORTGAGE!”

”NEXT MAN WHO SCRATCHES A RIG IS WALKING HOME! I MEAN IT!”

Concrete mixers churned in grinding rotation while welding torches hissed against steel joints, and beneath it all, foremen screamed threats about docked wages and construction workers screamed back in the universal language of people who communicated exclusively at full volume.

Kaiden stood with his girls at the center of it, watching the organized chaos spread outward in every direction. What had been open wilderness only a minute or two ago was being carved into a whole new location in real time.

”Are we just going to stand here?” Luna asked, foot tapping against the packed earth because standing still had never been in her skill tree.

Kaiden glanced at the others and found the same curiosity on every face. ”Let’s take a proper look.”

They headed south first, toward the loudest cluster.

”POUR’S CLEAR! MOVE YOUR ASSES, NEXT FORM!”

”WHO THE HELL LEFT THE GRADER RUNNING?! THAT’S COMING OUT OF SOMEONE’S CHECK!”

”How charming...” Aria murmured, pressing into Kaiden’s side and wrapping both arms around his as if the profanity-laden construction site posed a genuine danger to her person.

The backline mage who could level this entire plain with a flick of her wrist clung to him like a civilian caught in a warzone and saw absolutely nothing wrong with this.

”Yeah...” Alice agreed, slipping her hand into his free one. ”So scary out here...”

Bastet and Luna exchanged a flat look at the pair of high-level awakened women using a few crude laborers as an excuse to latch onto Kaiden in broad daylight.

Aria felt their stares, pressed her cheek against his shoulder, closed her eyes, and smiled. The yandere queen was in her natural habitat. She would not be shamed, and she would not be moved.

Alexandra watched her best friend agree with Aria for what might have been the first time in recorded history, and the adoring smile on the Hearth Valkyrie’s face said she found the whole thing precious.

The non-awakened construction teams had assembled an operation in minutes that looked like it had been running for a week.

Three concrete mixers ran in relay, each feeding a pouring squad that worked in practiced rotation: one group laying rebar frameworks while the second poured and the third moved to the next form without waiting.

A crane swung steel I-beams from a flatbed with the kind of mechanical certainty that came from performing the exact same lift a thousand times, each one settling into position over forms still wet from the pour ahead.

A foreman stood on the hood of a pickup at the center of it all, radio crackling against his ear. ”Section three, you’re falling behind!”

He pointed and a flatbed reversed into position. He whistled and a crane operator paused mid-swing to let a concrete pour clear the beam’s path. Every movement fed into the next like a machine with no idle parts.

Kaiden watched six workers execute a full pour without a single wasted step, and the thing that struck him was the composure.

These people ran their heavy machinery while a Guardian the size of a building padded past their work stations behind Kaiden, six burning eyes swiveling at every loud noise, tail swinging hard enough to send tremors through the freshly graded ground, and not one of them flinched.

No nervous looks at the monster sniffing their equipment, no hesitation when a mana spike from the dungeon entrance tickled their readings. They adjusted and kept pouring.

These outfits specialized in remote builds: guild installations, Association outposts, infrastructure in active rift zones where the ground could shift and the wildlife could kill you. The wilderness around a dungeon was a Tuesday for them.

’Mother certainly wasn’t a penny pincher when selecting contractors...’ Kaiden realized. ’I’ll have to look at our finances, wonder how the treasury is doing.’

Vespera had left Magnus almost all her earthly belongings, including her stake in New Dawn. What money the old guild held wasn’t hers, not even a single percent.

She retained her personal funds, but Kaiden didn’t know how much she actually had.

They also had sponsors, but as he didn’t have the time to really look at the ledgers, he didn’t know what they were working with.

All this told him that he’d really need to man up and start behaving like an actual guild leader.

And also expedite the collection process of the funds the association owed them as winners of the competition.

Luna’s foot had stopped tapping.

They moved north, and the difference hit within the first ten steps.

The Ironveil Collective didn’t build with machines but with their bodies.

A woman in Ironveil coveralls knelt at the edge of a staked perimeter and pressed both palms flat to the ground. ”[Terra Compression].”

The earth rippled outward from her hands in a controlled wave that traveled the length of the marked zone, and when it settled, the loose wilderness soil had compressed into a surface so flat and so dense that the foreman from the human side walked over, tested it with his boot, and gave a thumbs up without a word.

Twelve seconds. A grading team with bulldozers would have needed a full day.

Beside her, a man knelt at the next concrete form.

”[Structural Infusion].”

He ran his hands along the surface, mana flowing from his palms in a faint blue current that sank into the material as he passed.

The concrete set behind him in real time, curing in seconds instead of the standard drying period, and the structural integrity readings a technician took in his wake came back at double standard values. He finished the form, stood, and moved to the next.

Further out, a barrier specialist had raised a shimmering dome over the eastern quadrant, and inside it the teams operated in perfect conditions: no wind, no dust, stable temperature. Twenty meters beyond the dome’s edge, the open wilderness gusted hard enough to snap tarps against their tie-downs.

This was why the build would take days instead of years.

The human operators were exceptional, but they built on human timescales, bound by curing windows, grading schedules, weather, and the physical limits of muscle and machine.

The Ironveil awakened erased those limits. They compressed terrain in seconds, set materials on contact, shielded the site from the elements, and reinforced structures beyond anything engineering alone could produce.

The human side picked up every advantage without a beat lost, because they’d run this relay before.

Concrete poured onto freshly compressed earth. Frames bolted onto instantly cured footings. Welding teams operated inside the barrier dome as though stable conditions were guaranteed. Awakened prepared, humans built, awakened reinforced, humans finished.

”That’s incredible,” Aria murmured, watching the terraformer compress another section with nothing but her palms and a slow breath.

The third group was the one they knew.

Talia’s Runewoven had claimed the heart of the site, inscription platforms arranged in geometric formation around the dungeon entrance, and the quality of their work drew glances from even the Ironveil professionals.

Most guilds hired external enchanters for the final layer: wards, security arrays, enchanted infrastructure.

The firms that handled it charged a premium because runic integration at this scale required expertise most organizations simply didn’t have.

However, Eclipse didn’t need to look outside.